I don't know how I will eventual tag Monsters because the ship factor is .... oooooppphhhh

[sarasa_cat]

While one might think that this ridiculous project i keep threatening to finish Even the Littlest Monsters Cast Shadows Long and Tall is primarily a Vincent/Lucrecia --> Yuffie/Vincent story (and should be tagged as such), in actuality it is:

Lucrecia/m!OC [Random Dick from Graduate School]
Lucrecia/Grimoire Valentine  [Yes. This. Is. Where. Monsters. Goes. With. Canon. you're welcome.]
Lucrecia>Gast [This. Is. Not. Pretty.]
Lucrecia/Hojo

Vincent/f!OC1 [Girl he knew during high school + freshman year of undergrad, a terribly boring long lasting nothing of a relationship]
Vincent/f!OC2 [One night stand with his sister's best friend]
Vincent/Veld  [And then there is their 1970s glam rock nightlife** in Monsters]
               ** I need to make art of young Vincent/Veld in 1970s
Vincent/Veld/OC3+  [Various people Vincent and Veld picked up and took home / went home with]
Vincent/f!OC4  [Another university student whom Vincent knew from his old ethnic neighborhood on the south end of (old) Midgar]
Vincent > OC5 [A grad student Vince crushes on but nothing happens]
Vincent/f!OC6  [Vince gets picked up on New Years Eve and gets dumped after a one night stand]
Vincent/f!OC7 [A woman whom Vince meets in a bookstore, goes home with her, doesn't leave, and gets kicked out a few months later]
Vincent ?? f!OC8 [A sex worker with a long distance relationship boyfriend; Vincent thinks he's saving her from something, but, uh... nope.]
Vincent ?? Lucrecia [Vince misreads Lu's concern for him, mistakenly thinks they are dating. Nope. And then she "dumps" him and marries Hojo]
Vincent/Lucrecia [The affair; Lu dealing with guilt and domming the hell out of Vincent, and Vince is a confused messssssssss.]

Yuffie/f!OC  [briefly dates a girl in the boarding school she is sent to after Wutai surrenders and her father sends her away (for her safety)]
Yuffie/m!OC [meets a teen delinquent a few years older that her and moves into the share house he's in *after* Yuffie is kicked out/runs away from school]
Vincent + Yuffie friendship  [during FFVII:OG]
Vincent??Aerith + Lifestream/Chaos [<--- this is in a separate companion story THAT I NEED TO FINISH]
Aerith/Cloud [during FFVII:OG]
Tifa/Aerith [during FFVII:OG]
Tifa/Aerith/Cloud [during  FFVII:OG]
Cid/Shera in the background but repeatedly mentioned
Yuffie/Yuri  [minor character who was her friend in Wutai, canonically appears OTW2AS:Y]
Yuffie/Shalua [friends with benefits moment times a few encounters]
Reeve/HisInfinitePerversions [leaving the audience to guess just what in hell that man is doing with all of his remote cameras]
Vincent/Yuffie long term relationship


I think this pretty much turns Monsters into Audience of One fanfiction.

Does the fandom actually include people who are willing to read Vincent/Veld and Vincent/Yuffie and Lucrecia/PrettyMuchEveryone? 

Spoiler:  Vincent/Veld and Vincent/Yuffie are the only two healthy relationships Vincent has. The rest of Vincent's relationships are trainwrecks.

Comments

[thehungrycity]

Haha wow. I think I ship trainwreck relationships, maybe that's what you need to lead with as a tag ;)

I kind of like Lucrecia/everyone, although I could see how that might be off-putting to some people. How much of all these ships are actually going to show up in the story?

[sarasa_cat]

Literally all of them. (except for the Aerith??Vincent + Lifestream/Chaos thing that is in an unfinished companion novella that I need to finish)

You probably are right about making a tag for trainwreck relationships. It is just one wreck after another.

Although...

[sarasa_cat]

FWIW, most of Vincent's trainwrecks are just part of the texture of his life, back when he was lost and confused in the late 60s and throughout the 70s. (well, he's also lost and confused in present time canon but that's a different matter). Thus, when all of the backstory of young!Vincent rolls out, chapter by chapter, interspersed throughout the larger story, its just one trainwreck after another, all while his university experience and, later, career, spirals down the drain. It's all part of his lost and confused story, with him not realizing that (when young) Veld was his one anchor in reality and (when undead or whatever he is) Yuffie is his other anchor in reality.

As for Lucrecia, her strategy of sexualizing (as a power play) every powerful man in her career from graduate school to postdoc to her assistant research scientist position ... well ........ I actually suspect that this is something more readers will accept than reject. In addition to her canonical marriage to Hojo, canon leaves her *close* relationship with both Valentines -- father and son -- quite open to interpretation. Thus, Monsters turning this into a repeat behavior of hers -- something she doesn't quite understand until it is all too late -- kind of works? I think? (and, sadly, that part of Lu is heavily based on an RL person I once knew in academia plus a pinch and a dash of a couple other women from my mother's generation, also in academia.)

[thehungrycity]

So I looked up Veld and is that... Vincent's boss?

[sarasa_cat]

Depends on how one interprets canon with the time gap while Vincent is taking a Very Long "cannot cope" Nap.

At some point in the 1970s, Vincent and Veld were (canonically) colleagues/partners as Shinra Turks. Presumably they are of similar age. As the decades pass, Veld gets promoted up the chain and, well, Vincent has "disappeared" from normal corporate record after Hojo shots him and turned his body into test subject for Lovely Experimentation. Canonically, Vincent and Veld are briefly reunited some decades later when Veld has aged (and holds a position of seniority) and Vincent looks exactly as he did at age 27.

Monsters writes a backstory in which Vincent and Veld meet during their undergraduate years; they are roommates (and more) for a while and, after graduating, Veld is hired by Shinra. Vincent leaves to go to graduate school, drops out after a year and half, gets in touch with Veld, and Veld hooks Vincent up with a job at Shinra, Veld has minor seniority over Vincent, but not a "senior boss" kind of seniority.

[thehungrycity]

Ah, kk, makes sense. :)